Equality's Call: The Story of Voting Rights in America, by Deborah Diesen, illustrated by Magdalena Mora

Consent of the governed has been a mainstay of our country’s credo since its founding, when colonists rebelled against the rule of a monarchy from abroad. Our young country made a pledge to be self-determining, with liberty and justice for all. The right to vote is fundamental to the process of establishing a government to administer our democratic system, yet we have struggled, through the centuries, to ensure that everyone governed has a voice through their vote. Equality’s Call: The Story of Voting Rights in America by Deborah Diesen provides an exceedingly rich and engaging journey through the history of suffrage to voting rights today. The poetic narrative, in picture book format, honors the hard work of people whose resolve has moved the country forward toward full participation in elections, bringing us squarely to the challenges remaining today. Magdalena Mora’s engaging illustrations place readers in classrooms and countryside, demonstrations and public settings, where debate about the franchise takes place. The language is smooth and satisfying throughout, and the artful vignettes provide much to explore. Complex elements of governance – key amendments and legislation through the years – are presented at the end to invite discussion. Voting rights activists are introduced in an afterword, with cameos that draw readers to look back through the pages to find just where in the suffrage story they were engaged. Diesen’s book is a solid and inviting story of one of the most enduring national truths: “A right isn’t right Till it’s granted to all.”  Ages six and up—all the way to adult.

Supplementary materials are available at deborahdiesen.com

Prairie Lotus, by Linda Sue Park

Hanna and her father journey through the frontier west hoping to find a community in which they can establish themselves following the death of Hanna’s mother. With the forbidding prospect of a new town and new people who may well not accept her bi-racial heritage, Hanna draws on quiet memories of her Chinese mother’s resourcefulness when she and her father settle in LaForge in the Dakota Territory. In the shadow of the anti-Asian prejudice permeating 1880s western culture, Hanna’s father opens a home goods shop, his previous trade in California. Hanna had come to love assisting her mother with sewing and providing service to customers; she now longs to do the same, in her own right, alongside her father. Slowly she makes connections in the community—with her teacher, a classmate, and Wichapiwin, a Sioux woman who introduces her to a wild tuber for cooking. Slowly Hanna gains a self-assuredness that helps her weather the outright slurs and assaults of some of the townspeople. Resilient in the face of both racial and gender prejudice, Hanna finds her own success. In the historical novel Prairie Lotus, Linda Sue Park’s prose dances with immediacy, humor and plain-spoken perceptiveness, bringing alive for readers both a wonderful character and the bumpy road of our history. Ages 8-12.

Words That Built a Nation, by Marilyn Miller, Ellen Scordato, and Dan Tucker, illustrated by Mary Kate McDevitt

Words That Built a Nation: Voices of Democracy That Have Shaped American History is a remarkable volume that delivers on the promise of its title. Forty-one documents highlight the contributions of individuals who addressed significant issues over the centuries since 1620 when the Mayflower Compact stated the colonists “solemnly & mutualy in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick.” We know, looking back, that that “body politick” set the counterpoint for points of view in our history; newcomers and minority voices continued to strive to distinguish themselves in a country whose stated values were always those of freedom and equality under the law. 

From the advice of Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack, Abigail Adams’s exhortation to her husband to “Remember the ladies,” Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers in 1788, and Frederick Douglass’s The Meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro in 1852 that clearly identified the sorrow of the internal slave trade, entries bring readers through to Chief Red Cloud’s searing Statement on the Causes of Wounded Knee in 1890, President Woodrow Wilson’s The Fourteen Points denoting a plan to Congress for how the world might be “fit and safe to live in” following World War I, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka outlawing racial segregation in public schools in 1954, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring alerting the world to the dangers of industrial pollution in 1962. “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed” were the words of United States astronauts as the first human beings landed on the Moon in 1969, watched by 600 million people worldwide; Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American woman elected to the U. S. House of Representatives and the first to campaign for the Democratic nomination for President in 1972, declaring she faced more resistance as a female than as a Black person; Ronald Reagan provided a challenge to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall” dividing East and West Berlin in 1987; at the United Nations Conference on Women in 1995, First Lady Hillary Rodman Clinton addressed the urgent need for women’s rights—human rights—to be respected and protected worldwide; George W. Bush’s Address to the Nation following the September 11 attacks endeavored to identify a “proper balance between national security and civil liberties” at a perilous time; and in 2008, Senator Barack Obama conveyed in his Speech on Race that his own genetic makeup was emblematic of our country:  “the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts—that out of many we are truly one.”

The forty-one statements in this compilation include cornerstones of our nation (for example, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, pivotal Amendments and two of Abraham Lincoln’s addresses) and responses to landmark events that variously unified or divided our nation—a nation that has struggled to hold true to the values of freedom and equality. Every entry includes original words, archival photos, a profile of the speaker, a short historical context and a reflective response indicating the import in the larger context—all setting the stage for fruitful insights and conversation. 

To use the word of one book reviewer, this volume is nothing short of “breathtaking.” Our history is complicated. The fabric of our nation’s democracy is woven with many threads of hope and human endeavor. Authors Marilyn Miller, Ellen Scordato, and Dan Tucker, with illustrator Mary Kate McDevitt, present a truly inspiring and informative history lesson for ages 10 and up.

Given that public libraries are closed at this time, we suggest online book ordering at bookshop.org/shop/harvardbookstore

A Different Pond, by Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui

There are many ways to convey family history. Sometimes we do it through photos, sometimes through stories, sometimes through beloved objects, sometimes through traditions—or perhaps, often, a combination of these. A Different Pond is a quietly masterful picture book in which a father recalls his childhood fishing on a pond in Vietnam with his father. When this present-day father and his Vietnamese American son fish for the day’s supper before the work day begins, memories of the war that was fought—and the brother that did not return—are passed from old to young. These are not easy memories but they can be key to the awareness of a child finding a place in the span of generations. Certainly, people moving from one country to another—such as the refugee family in this book—have a strong reason to share stories, resisting the possible loss of formative elements of culture and family. As the young boy in the story hears his father’s memories, he is focused on the details of helping build a good fire and learning to bait his hook, but the larger impact of the shared moment is felt. The boy is making his own memories, yet layers of heritage are conveyed. The expert prose of Bao Phi and the deeply resonant images of Thi Bui work together seamlessly to relate a story of struggle, strength, history and family. Endnotes from both author and illustrator cement our understanding of the sensibilities creators bring to the best of books. Ages 7 up.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis

Author Christopher Paul Curtis has an inimitable way of combining laugh-out-loud humor with deep and abiding human themes. His first novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, is highly engaging and extraordinarily moving. The Watson family of Flint, Michigan, heads south to their tiny-but-tough grandmother’s home in Birmingham, Alabama, to deliver Kenny’s older brother Byron for the summer, to learn some lessons that his parents hope will keep him from becoming an “official juvenile delinquent.” Their adventures hold more than they can begin to imagine. Nine-year-old Kenny narrates his family’s trip; his voice is full of affection for his momma and dad, little sister Joetta and Byron—and the fresh anticipation of visiting his mother’s growing-up place. Looking back, we now know that the summer of 1963 was a pivotal moment in the civil rights history of our country. Readers might perceive that an ulterior motive of Kenny’s parents in taking the trip is to introduce their children to the strains of racism still imbedded in the south, but the deaths of four young girls in a fire at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is a horrid shock. Kenny’s relationship to the blaze and its aftermath are gently told; understandably, it has a permanent impact on him and on his family. Curtis’s fictional telling of this historical event, for which he received a Newbery Honor award, is as graceful as it could possibly be, and a fine introduction to a difficult topic. Ages 9 -12.

Grand Canyon, by Jason Chin

Grand Canyon, written and illustrated by Jason Chin, is an outstanding multidisciplinary introduction to one of our nation’s most glorious natural landscapes. Whether or not one has had the chance to visit Grand Canyon, readers will find Chin’s presentation of the vistas, wildlife and geologic features of this wonder compelling. In Chin’s book, a father and daughter explore the depths and details of the canyon, sharing their experience as they travel. The development of the canyon over millennia is made vivid by precise depictions of fossils formed and revealed as time passes; a spectacular counterpoint is presented when facing pages unfold to reveal the canyon's amazing expanse. The necessary care and protection of this treasure will surely be evident to readers. Chin provides a detailed map and substantial additional information, inviting even further consideration of this breath-taking landscape. Ages 7-12.

Ghost Boys, by Jewell Parker Rhodes

In the novel Ghost Boys, author Jewell Parker Rhodes tells the story of twelve-year-old Jerome, who moves daily from the safety of his strong family to the threatening setting of school, where bullies pick on him because he is a truly “good” kid. His family, particularly his Grandma, lives quietly with the fears inherent in being an African American boy in an urban neighborhood. When Jerome’s new friend Carlos (to whom Jerome is nice when Carlos moves up from Texas and has no friends) convinces him to share his toy gun while playing, the worst happens: a local police officer, feeling threatened by the possibility of a gun being turned against him, shoots Jerome. The dispatch with which the white police officer’s case is dismissed is a clear sign of the deep-seated biases of the system of justice with which Jerome and his family live.

In death, Jerome becomes a ghost, able to observe his family’s grief and outrage as he tries to understand what happened to him. His thoughts, in life and in death, are woven into an affecting narrative chapter by chapter. He realizes that, as a ghost, he can be seen and heard by Sarah, the daughter of the officer who killed him. He can also see other ghost boys—those hundreds and hundreds of young men killed, throughout history, by the violence of racism. In particular, Jerome meets Emmett Till, a young black boy killed in an historic incident in 1955, who urges him to tell his story to Sarah. It is the mission of ghost boys to speak their truths to the living, as only the living can help make the world a better place. Sarah grows to understand the systemic nature of her father’s “mistake” and, never alienating her father, she undertakes a school project to explore the conscious and unconscious racism present in society historically and today.

Rhodes’s prose conveys gracefully and authentically the powerlessness Jerome and his family feel faced by fear, loss and grief; the redemptive possibility of learning from history; and the importance of bearing witness to both the pain of racial injustice and the hope for a better future. The difficult themes in Ghost Boys are presented in a stunningly thoughtful, engaging way that invites conversation and understanding. Ages 11 up.

In A Wreath for Emmett Till, author Marilyn Nelson crafts the painful, true story of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, lynched in 1955 for the alleged crime of whistling at a white woman. Nelson’s fifteen sonnets weave his story in a dignified and searing way and, along with Philippe Lardy’s strong illustrations, invite conversation and is an excellent complement to Ghost Boys. Ages 12 and up.